First Man On The Sun
by DarkSlayer84
Summary: A hallucinatory look into the mind of resouled Spike just before Season Seven. Spike's POV, naturally.


_**First Man On The Sun**_

DarkSlayer84

**Spoilers:** "Crushed" and earlier; "Seeing Red" (implied)

**Notes:** I think of "First Man on the Sun" as Spike's theme with Buffy, but this ain't no songfic. Also, I haven't seen Season Seven, so if something doesn't fit, too bad. I don't own Buffy The Vampire Slayer and I'm not making money therefrom.

_"It was the night before  
When I knocked on your door  
Had the buttons of your dress in my eye  
Three o' clock in the morning  
When my mind is dawning  
I remember what I've done and I cry _

_You make me feel like a man  
Who can't see that his time has come  
You're so pretty, I'm so dumb  
I'm the first man on the sun ..." _

--Babybird, "First Man On The Sun"

She murmurs in the back of her throat; she's feeling comfortable. Her hair tickles my chest as she moves. Her arm is close and warm, her wrist nestled against the side of my face, tempting and near. She looks down at me, smiling slightly. It makes her eyes sparkle.

"You're so...low."

Wait one damn minute! I'm not waiting for "I love you"--not from her--but a "thanks for the tumble" might have been nice.

"You're welcome," I say, coldly. Cold politeness is best. Drives the Yanks insane. 'Stiff upper lip, and all that rot.' I could kill whatever bugger said that, 'cept like as not he's dead already.

She straightens, stiffens, and springs out of bed onto her feet. Wonder if she knows she bounces when she leaps up like that. Probably not. Bouncing is for plebians, boors, and uncultured barbarians, not Buffy the bleeding vampire slayer.

It's wrong, horribly wrong, what this little bird has done to me. She's made me hers. Trapped me in a cage, her cage, all blonde hair and innocent smiles. Sometimes I think she'll crush me, and the rest I don't mind. She fascinates me. She's completely unaware of how normal she is. It's charming, really. And the way she wiggles into those little T-shirts of hers? Nothing short of spectacular.

So we're dressing, and she's wiggling, and I'm looking. And she catches me looking.

Which earns me the inevitable "God, Spike!" and random piece of clothing in the face.

It's hers. Her sweater jacket. It's blue and fuzzy and so very Buffy. Vengefully innocent. Slayer chic, she calls it. It even smells like her--makes me think of kittens and vanilla and sunlight.

I miss the sunlight.

Quote me on that, and you're a dead man.

I reach up to peel the thing off my face, and without warning, it's no longer a sweater, but a threatening, pointy piece of wood.

She pulled a stake on me!

"Very nice," I growl. "And exactly how am I supposed to apologize if you won't sodding talk to me?"

"We're past talking," she growls. She lunges into me, bites me on the lips, and in it goes, clean through my jacket--the jacket I wasn't wearing, the jacket belonging to the slayer in New York, my totem, proof of--what? "You're an evil, soulless thing."

The wood slips past the jacket, splintering a little, and smashes against my heart.

"Not anymore," I say. The world melts as her expression changes from hatred to horrified understanding, but it's too late. Much too late.

Poof.

Ah, dreams. Such a beautiful bloody nuisance.

Now that I'm awake, I'm in a more rational mood. Somewhat.

I'm tired of alcohol. Even the undead can't live on rotgut. I've progressed to blood, straight up. I held off for Buffy--a foolish and sentimental thing to do--but she isn't here now. She may never come back at all, the selfish bint.

So why do I feel incredibly guilty?

Whatever happened to Spike the Bad? It's like he bought a ticket home and didn't tell me. I've never belonged anywhere. Not that it's bothered me, until now.

I never did think of belonging, until I had someone to belong with. Drusilla. She was my first--not my only, but the one I thought I would stand beside until all the world was dust. Not just us but all the humans, the trees, the water and life and traffic, all of it gone, nothing, and--bloody hell! I'm starting to sound like she used to. It's as if my mind doesn't fit in my skull right, without her.

She was my night. She had death's slim pale arms, hair like oblivion, and a soft killer's smile. She made it all bearable--the hunger and the dark and the cold. She even kept Angel in line--no mean feat, I assure you. Cruelty by kindness, that was my Drusilla.

I'm not thinking about Buffy. I will not defile Dru's memory with the thought of that bright, blonde, shining thing that makes me remember the harsh splendor of daylight. I won't.

And I am not sitting here in a bathrobe watching daytime telly.

I'm wearing jeans and my leather jacket, and flipping channels instead. Between _Passions_, _Days of Our Lives_, and some godawful martial arts show with too much cleavage and not enough plot.

"In each of us, there burns the soul of a warrior," the show's narrator informs me, before I shut the blasted thing off.

Warrior, indeed. I was a warrior, once. I was a killer. I was the night.

I was a poet.

"I arise from dreams of thee,  
In the first sweet sleep of the night--"

Not mine. Keats. The bloke had his problems, but he wrote gorgeous poetry.

I was bloody awful. Hence my nickname. That was what they called me, once, chortling with it: William the Bloody.

You laugh at me, and I'll gut you. Nosy little blighter. What right have you got, messing in a man's private pain?

And just who _are_ you speaking to, William?

I'm hungry and my head hurts and there's a stab of daylight through the cracked windowpane over the bed. I sort of study it out of the corner of my eye, bright and lethal. I'm wondering if I could lay down, just at its edges, and bask in its warmth without being vaporized. I know I'm in love. I think I'm going crazy. It's all sunlight. Death and pain. Pain and light. Light and beauty...

Sod a dog. I'm losing my mind.

There's a horrid song on the radio. Rap music. Minging rubbish. But I haven't the energy to turn it off. That's what feeding on animal blood in an effort to look genteel for your lady will do to you. Even when your lady doesn't want you and thinks you're vile because you, like the vampire you are, or were once--the killer you've been for ages--finally respond with violence when you don't get your way.

"The freaks come out at night," the singer insists.

"Bugger off," I tell him. But the song keeps going.

"The freaks come out at night, the freaks come out at night."

On and on like that. Relentless. By the third refrain, it hits me: I'm pathetic.

It's all the slayer's fault. She's taken my gonads and stashed them somewhere, and I won't be me again until I get them back.

"The freaks come out at night."

Right on, mate. Now go away and leave us nice, docile undead in peace.

How did Angel do it? How? How did he stomach having a soul?

What _is_ a soul, anyway? Can't eat it, it won't keep you warm at night, it doesn't keep the pain at bay. It doesn't make the daylight any less cruel. So what in bleeding hell's it good for?

I regret. Big friggin' deal. I'm sorry for my actions, now--most of them. The ones I can remember, the ones that don't just blur into one long red line of killing and feeding, feeding and killing. So I have remorse. That's something.

Fat lot of good it'll do me now. The Court of Buffy has already found me guilty.

On the other hand, it proves her wrong, her and that mealy-mouthed little wanker: I am _not_ an evil, soulless thing.

Not anymore.

There's a little ditty bouncing through my head, something I overheard ages ago, when all the streets were cobblestone and children played hoop-and-sticks in the gutters. I remember because Dru liked it, when we hopped the pond the first time; it made her smile.

"Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do..." great. Now I'm _singing_ it. A resouled vampire treading the streets of Sunnydale in the dark, skipping down the pavement.

I'm never gonna live it down.

"I'm half-crazy, all for the love of you. It won't be a stylish marriage, I can't afford a carriage."

A cat sees me and goes running with a soft hiss off into the shadows. I don't mind; I'm clinging to a streetlamp, dancing with it, still singing.

"But you'll look neat, upon the seat of a bicycle built for two."

Every second-rate nasty on the block will be after me. Not that it matters.

I can regret. I can love. I can sing and remember and dance, and I can kiss the streetlamps if I bloody well want to.

Let them come. It won't be Spike they're after, anyhow.

William the Bloody is back in town.

-END-


End file.
